Stop Making These 5 Mistakes in Your e-Learning

Hold it right there! Before you send that e-Learning course to your boss for approval, take a moment and make sure you’re not guilty of these five common e-Learning mistakes.

Lack of Learning Objectives
There’s no substitute for writing proper learning objectives. A solid set of e-Learning objectives sets your courses up for success. And who doesn’t want a successful e-Learning course? Take the time to list out your e-Learning objectives, and keep them near you as you build your course. You won’t regret it. Need help writing learning objectives? Take a look at this blog: 4 Tips for Creating Effective e-Learning Objectives for Yourself

Text, Text and More Text
I have two words for you: “White. Space.” White space is incredibly important to the design of your e-Learning. If you fill your course with too much text, your learners will be overwhelmed and stop reading. Learn about white space and more in this blog: Tips from a Graphic Designer

Silence
If your learners want silence, they will turn off their audio. But why would you force them to endure silent, next-driven e-Learning when adding audio can increase their engagement and enjoyment? This goes along with the too much text mistake. You can solve both problems by taking the text on the screen and turning it into a voiceover script, and then selecting a meaningful graphic for the slide, along with a few key points in text. Here are some tips on writing a script for your e-Learning: Techniques for Developing Your e-Learning Narrative Flow

Gratuitous Graphics
Don’t let the previous point trick you into filling your course with miscellaneous graphics instead of text! Graphics can enhance your course in many ways, but not if they’re there just to fill space. You need to carefully select graphics that will get your learners’ attention and engage them. For help choosing graphics, check out this blog: How to Choose the Best Images for Your e-Learning.

Recorded PowerPoints or Webinars
So five years ago some intern created a PowerPoint presentation on the correct way to carry out a procedure. You can just record that and distribute it as training, right? Wrong! There’s so much more that needs to go into e-Learning. Not convinced? Check out this post, Tips from an Instructional Design Expert for more insight into why instructional design is important to e-Learning. In addition, a recorded webinar is much harder to update for policy changes or technology updates.

Now that you’ve checked for these 5 mistakes in your e-Learning, get out there and create more amazing online training courses! And don’t forget to subscribe to the Lectora® e-Learning Blog for e-Learning tips and how-tos!